Page 6 of The Warrior's Oath
“Nyota.”
“I’d like to say it was nice to meet you, but given the circumstances…”
“Yeah, I’m with you on that,” Nyota agreed. “So, what do we—”
The door slid open and a monster of a creature strode in. Tall, muscular, carrying what looked like a rifle of some sort, though with those sharp teeth that could easily rend flesh from bones, she doubted it would need to use it.
Nyota felt adrenaline flood her system as panic began to rise. Her vision blurred suddenly, and nothing made sense.
She cried out, snapping from her dream and jerking upright in the dim moonlight of the alien world, her head pounding, albeit less than before. Korvin looked up from the pile of what appeared to be salvage from the wrecked ship he had been sorting through.
Nyota noted the fluid nature of his movements as he set back to work. Something about the way he was doing it seemed off. Different. She quickly realized it was the long fingers on his hands. They were not like a human’s hands. These hands sported an extra joint on each finger, and it was that subtle difference that made them move in such an unusual way.
His kind must be pretty dexterous, she mused as she settled back down, watching him continue his work. There was the sound of water nearby, she noted, and perhaps the faintest whiff of moisture, but the pounding in her head put that thought on the back burner in a hurry.
Korvin glanced over at her, then back to his work, a look somewhat near contempt on his face, though he at least made an attempt to hide it. But she saw it, plain as anything. For whatever reason, the man who had crashed down with her seemed to resent her. She had no idea why. Hell, she’d barely spoken to him at all. And he’d carried her from the ship to safety. So what was the deal? Why was he upset?
As if he felt her still staring at him, Korvin looked up from his work once more, forcing his face to appear neutral at best. “You are still in need of rest. Sleep. We will have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Whatever his problem was, Nyota still felt he would protect and watch over her despite his ire. It was in the way he carried himself. How he spoke to her. She couldn’t place exactly what his reasoning was, but with the state of her aching head she didn’t exactly feel up to pondering the intricacies of interspecies diplomacy at the moment.
With a little sigh, she lay back down and closed her eyes. Answers would be had soon enough. But he was right. She needed rest, and sweet slumber took her almost immediately. She tossed and turned at first in the cool night air, but when Korvin finally lay close to her, sharing his warmth, her dreams seemed to quiet, and she slept soundly through the night.
As for what the new day would bring, that would have to wait until sunrise.
CHAPTERFOUR
Once more a ray of warm sunlight roused Nyota as the burning orb overhead transcribed a lazy arc across the sky, its light drifting across her face until it reached her closed eyes. The orange glow of the inside of her lids pulled her from her slumber much more gradually and pleasantly than an alarm clock. At least she had that going for her.
She roused, rolling to her side and pushing up to one elbow, forcing her weary lids to open.
“How long have I been out?” she wondered.
It was morning, so clearly she’d slept straight through the night. And judging by the aches in her body, she hadn’t moved much, if at all. Of course, a good many of those were also day-after bruises forming as a result of her violent arrival on this world.
Her eyes opened fully with a jolt of adrenaline flooding her system. “Oh shit,” she gasped as the prior day’s events flashed back through her mind. “We crashed. And I was… wait, how did I get here?”
Nyota looked around.Korvin. That was his name. The one who’d pulled her from the wreckage. She noted the pile of salvage he had been sifting through the night before, now separated into different groups of items, though she had no idea what any of them were for.
A pile of his clothing lay beside her, but her rescuer was nowhere to be seen.
The faint sound of running water made her roll over and look in the other direction. What she hadn’t been able to see the prior night was the small stream she had sensed was in fact flowing just a little way down a gentle hill from where she lay.
She noted they had camped out high enough to not be impacted by the cool, damp air directly beside the water and was grateful Korvin was apparently an experienced enough outdoorsman to know better.
Movement caught her eye. What she had thought was merely a rock in the water abruptly rose. A head, it turned out to be, attached to a tall, muscular, and utterly naked male.
Korvin took a moment to scrub himself with his meaty hands, his long fingers sliding over the chiseled divots and bulges of his impressive physique. His golden-tan skin almost glowed in the morning sunlight, and the water only served to enhance the effect.
His skin was beautiful. She could also see, now that he was totally naked, that it was also decorated with flowing lines of tattoos connecting more detailed designs scattered across his body. A few of them seemed to be broken by thick scars, she noted. Whether it had been their Raxxian captors or some other conflict that had caused them, she hadn’t a clue, but it only added to his powerful image.
In any case, she was more than content to study him from her vantage point, taking in the impressive sight with unexpected relish.
Korvin stood in the waist-deep water a moment, rolling his shoulders slowly, then rotating his head around a few times to loosen the muscles, his broad back flexing as he moved. Nyota’s breathing sped up at the sight.
He stood still, glistening, breathing the clean air deep into his lungs, then dropped below the surface for a moment, rising again with a splash.
He turned and began sloshing toward the shore, the water washing over his body, flowing down his magnificent physique as he did. Nyota may have been concussed, but her head didn’t need any help processing what she was seeing, and her body reacted of its own accord.
